January 12, 1994

Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization voted today in Brussels -- unanimously but with varying degrees of conviction -- for a broader but still highly conditional plan to use air strikes in the war in Bosnia. Combining a British and French initiative with an American one, the alliance once again threatened to call in air strikes to save Sarajevo. In a departure, it also decided to study what steps it could take, including air strikes, to relieve Canadian peacekeeping troops trapped at Srebrenica, in northern Bosnia, and to reopen the airstrip at Tuzla, in central Bosnia.

The death row garment factory is humming at midday. Condemned murderers wield scissors and razor-sharp knives as they snip and finish piles of work pants at their sewing machines. A few chat at the coffee urn within relaxed sight of their caged-off guard. Life goes on and new work pants move as fast as time through the skilled hands of the legally doomed 58-man work shift. In the setting of rifle towers and razor-wire fences, the simple Quonset hut factory here at the Ellis One unit of the Huntsville prison has a strangely upbeat air, as of some Brechtian production of "The Pajama Game."

Few subjects are closer to Vice President Al Gore's heart than developing an advanced communications network for the country, but on this matter the Administration has decided it is wiser to coax than to dictate. In a speech today in Los Angeles, Mr. Gore outlined a series of legislative initiatives aimed at promoting the construction of an advanced nationwide network that can link classrooms, electronic libraries, rural doctors and ordinary people in their own homes. [ Page D5. ]

In his first major action as chairman of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Michael H. Jordan cut the dividend in half yesterday and announced a pretax charge of $750 million to cover the costs of laying off 3,400 employees, selling operations and settling legal disputes. Mr. Jordan, who was named chief executive in July, has disclosed little since then except to announce in September that earnings would fall considerably short of the investment community's expectations. Paul Lego, the previous chairman, was forced out a year ago as a result of disastrous losses in the now-disbanded financial services subsidiary.

It's vodka with a twist. And vodka marketing with a vengeance. Michel Roux, who was instrumental in building the Swedish brand Absolut into the nation's best-selling imported vodka, overtaking the Russian brand Stolichnaya, will soon be responsible for selling his former rival.